Marilyn Smith

Three times since the first of the year, we’ve received phone calls from the staff at our mothers’ assisted living facility.

Call No. 1 came after 10 p.m. on a Saturday — Stan’s mom had fallen getting out of bed. She wasn’t hurt and was in good spirits about it.

Call No. 2 was less than a week later, when his mom was too weak to stand or hold a cup of coffee and told the staff she wanted to see Stan because she was going to die that day. Her vital signs indicated that she had quite a bit more time left,  but Stan went right over to check on her. She was dehydrated. Aides brought her juice and broth and he got her a glass of water with a straw. By dinner time, she was back in the dining room at her appointed table. The next day, she was fine, and she was thrilled when we brought her a big insulated cup with a lid and its own straw to encourage more frequent intake.

I’ve since learned that dehydration is common in the elderly and can mimic dementia (or simply make it worse), along with doing all sorts of other basic and awful things to the body and mind. It’s easy for older people to get dehydrated, too. They don’t get thirsty the way younger people do.

Our moms routinely ask about each other through us; they live in the same wing of the building on different floors and sit maybe 15 feet apart in the dining room. But they grew up in the I-Don’t-Want-to-Say-Anything Generation, where it’s acceptable to ask other people about each other rather than talking to the other person directly. Same thing as complaining to us about some aspect of daily life rather than talking to the people who can actually solve the problem — lower the thermostat, hang the picture, figure out why the TV keeps showing the blue screen that says No Signal!

Saturday morning, I’ve got half a mile left to go on the treadmill and Stan answers Call No. 3. This one was about Mom. Mom? I expect these calls about Stan’s mom, not mine — the woman who continues to declare that she’s too young to live where she’s living and that no one there is interested in the same things she is (books, movies, TV.)

Mom had had an accident but she was OK, the aide told me. Her 4-by-6-foot cabinet that is chock-full of store-bought and home-recorded VHS tapes and DVDs had fallen on her and she couldn’t get out from under it. She’s pushed the button on her emergency alert wristband,  which was just what she should have done. She’d been extricated and is waiting now for the cabinet to be screwed to the wall so this won’t happen again. And we are profoundly relieved that this didn’t happen while she was still living alone in her house. Though she had an emergency alert system there as well, the cabinet was in a back room that she didn’t heat and finding her would have taken much longer.

Mom’s sore today but getting around pretty well. I brought her a new pair of shoes this afternoon (heckuva deal at Footwise in Corvallis, last day of their January clearance sale, 20% off the last markdown price) and insisted she take them on a test walk around the hallways, then out to my car. She insisted she wasn’t feeling well, but the new shoes felt good (this is a miracle because they are not the brand she usually wears), it was sunny and warm outside, and as I drove away, she and Irene were rolling along the sidewalk on a genuine constitutional.

What I saw as I drove away was my Mom, yes, but a stiff -limbed elderly woman, making her way slowly along a level surface with her mechanical helper. The Video Cabinet Incident was the first call. It won’t be the last.

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